Too Many Cooks/Champagne for One (46 page)

She’ll probably deny it. I’m pretty sure she will. Naturally she would.”

“No doubt. And your meeting her this evening was accidental?”

“No,” Dinky said. He had also had time to realize that that was too fishy. He went on, “She phoned me this morning and said she was at the Christie Hotel, registered as Edith Upson. She had known that I was Mrs. Robilotti’s nephew, and she said she wanted to see me and ask me about her daughter who had died. I told her I hadn’t been there Tuesday evening, and she said she knew that, but she wanted to see me. I agreed to see her because I didn’t want to offend her. I didn’t want it to get out that I had been intimate with Faith Usher’s mother. We arranged to meet at that restaurant.”

“Had you known previously that she was Faith Usher’s mother?”

“I had known that she had a daughter, but not that her name was Faith. She had spoken of her daughter when we—when I had known her.”

“What did she ask you about her daughter this evening?”

“She just wanted to know if I knew anything that hadn’t been in the papers. Anything about the people there or exactly what had happened. I could tell her about the people, but I didn’t know any more about what had happened than she did.”

“Do you wish to elaborate on any of this? Or add anything?”

“There’s nothing to add.”

“Then I’ll see Mrs. Usher. After I speak with her I’ll ask you in again, with her present. Archie, take Mr. Byne and bring Mrs. Usher.”

He came like a lamb. He had thrown away his discard and made his draw and his bets, and was ready for the show-down. I opened the door for him, held it for Mrs. Usher to enter, closed it, and returned to my desk. She went to the red leather chair, so Wolfe had to swivel to face her. Another item of Saul’s report on her had been that she liked men, and there were indications that men probably liked her—the way she handled her hips when she walked, the tilt of her head, the hint of a suggestion in her eyes, even now, when she was under pressure and when the man she was looking at was not a likely candidate for a frolic. And she was forty. At twenty she must have been a treat.

Wolfe breathed deep again. Exertion right after a meal was pretty rugged. “Of course, madam,” he said, “my reason for speaking with you and Mr. Byne separately is transparent: to see if your account will agree with his. Since you have had no opportunity for collusion, agreement would be, if not conclusive, at least persuasive.”

She smiled. “You use big words, don’t you?” Something in her tone and her look conveyed the notion that for years she had been wanting to meet a man who used big words.

Wolfe grunted. “I try to use words that say what I mean.”

“So do I,” she declared, “but sometimes it’s hard to find the ones I want. I don’t know what Mr. Byne told you, but all I can do is tell you the truth. You want to know how I happened to be with him there tonight, isn’t that it?”

“That’s it.”

“Well, I phoned him this morning and said I
wanted to see him and he said he would meet me there at Tom’s Joint, I had never heard of it before, at a quarter past seven. So I went. That’s not very thrilling, is it?”

“Only moderately. Have you known him long?”

“I don’t really
know
him at all. I met him somewhere about a year ago, and I wish I could tell you where, but I’ve been trying to remember and I simply
can’t
. It was a party somewhere, but I can’t remember where. Anyhow, it doesn’t matter. But yesterday I was sitting at the window thinking about my daughter. My dear daughter Faith.” She stopped to gulp, but it wasn’t very impressive. “And I remembered meeting a man named Byne, Austin Byne, and someone telling me, maybe he told me himself, that he was the nephew of the rich Mrs. Robilotti who used to be Mrs. Albert Grantham. And my daughter had died at Mrs. Robilotti’s house, so maybe he could tell me about her, and maybe he could get Mrs. Robilotti to see me so I could ask her about her. I wanted to learn all I could about my daughter.” She gulped.

It didn’t look good. In fact, it looked bad. Byne had been smart enough to invent one that she couldn’t be expected to corroborate; he had even warned that she would probably deny it; and what was worse, it was even possible that he hadn’t invented it. He might have been telling the truth, like a gentleman. The meeting of Wolfe’s two bright ideas at Tom’s Joint, which had looked so rosy when Saul told me they were together, might fizzle out entirely. Maybe he wasn’t a genius after all.

If he was sharing my gloom it didn’t show. He asked, “Since your rendezvous with Mr. Byne was innocuous,
why were you alarmed by his threat to call the police? What were her words, Archie?”

“ ‘Not the cops. My God, not the cops.’ ”

“Yes. Why, Mrs. Usher?”

“I don’t like cops. I never have liked cops.”

“Why did you leave your home and go to a hotel and register under another name?”

“Because of how I felt, what my daughter had done. I didn’t want to see people. I knew newspapermen would come. And cops. I wanted to be alone. You would too if—”

The doorbell rang, and I went. Sometimes I let Fritz answer it when I am engaged, but with her there and Byne in the front room I thought I had better see who it was, and besides, I was having a come-down and felt like moving. It was only Orrie Cather. I opened up and greeted him, and he crossed the sill, and I shut the door. When he removed his coat there was disclosed a leather thing, a zippered case, that he had had under it.

“What’s that?” I asked. “Your week-end bag?”

“No,” he said. “It’s Mrs. Usher’s sec—”

My hand darted to clap on his mouth. He was startled, but he can take a hint, and when I headed down the hall and turned right to the dining room he followed.

I shut the door, moved away from it, and demanded, “Mrs. Usher’s what?”

“Her secret sin.” There was a gleam in his eye. “I want to give it to Mr. Wolfe myself.”

“You can’t. Mrs. Usher is in the office with him. Where did—”

“She’s here? How come?”

“That can wait. Where did you get that thing?”

I may have sounded magisterial, but my nerves were a little raw. It put Orrie on his dignity. His chin went up. “It’s a pleasure to report, Mr. Goodwin. Mr. Panzer and I were covering the Christie Hotel. When the subject appeared and hopped a taxi he followed in one before I could join him. That left me loose and I phoned in. Mr. Wolfe asked me if there had been any indication how long she would be gone, and I said yes, since she took a taxi it certainly wouldn’t be less than half an hour and probably longer, and he said it would be desirable to take a look at her room, and I said fine. It took a while to get in. Do you want the details?”

“That can wait. What’s in it?”

“It was in a locked suitcase—not the one the messenger took today, a smaller one. The suitcase was easy, but this thing had a trick lock and I had to bust it.”

I put out a hand. He hated to give it up, but protocol is protocol. I took it to the table, unzipped it, and pulled out two envelopes, one nine by twelve and the other one smaller. Neither was sealed, and hadn’t been. I slipped out the contents of the big one.

They were pictures that had been clipped from magazines and newspapers. I would have recognized him even if there had been no captions, since I had been old enough to read for some years, and you often run across a picture of a multi-millionaire philanthropist. The one on top was captioned: “Albert Grantham (left) receiving the annual award of the American Benevolent League.” They were all of Grantham, twenty or more. I started to turn them over, one by one, to see if anything was written on them.

“To hell with that,” Orrie said impatiently. “It’s the other one.”

It, not so big, held another envelope, smaller, of white rag bond. The engraved return in the corner said “Albert Grantham,” with the Fifth Avenue address, and it was addressed in longhand to Mrs. Elaine Usher, 812 West 87th Street, New York, and below was written “By Messenger.” Inside were folded sheets. I unfolded them and read:

As I finished and looked up Orrie said, “I want to give it to Mr. Wolfe myself.”

“I don’t blame you.” I folded the sheets and put them in the envelope. “Quite a letter.
Quite
a letter. I saw a note in the paper the other day that some bozo is doing a biography of him. He would love to have this. You lucky stiff. I’d give a month’s pay for the kick you got when you found it.”

“It
was
nice. I want to give it to him.”

“You will. Wait here. Help yourself to champagne.”

I left, crossed to the office, stood until Wolfe finished a sentence, and told him, “Mr. Cather wants to show you something. He’s in the dining room.” He got up and went, and I sat down. Judging by the expression
on Mrs. Usher’s face, she had been doing fine. I really would rather not have looked at her, to see the cocky little tilt of her head, the light of satisfaction in her eyes, knowing as I did that she was about to be hit by a ton of brick. So I didn’t. I turned to my desk and opened a drawer and got out papers, and did things with them. When she told my back that she was glad I had brought them to Wolfe, she didn’t mind a bit explaining to him, I wasn’t even polite enough to turn around when I answered her. I had taken my notebook from my pocket and was tearing sketches of cats from it when Wolfe’s footsteps came.

As he sat down he spoke. “Bring Mr. Byne, Archie. And Saul.”

I went and opened the door and said, “Come in, gentlemen.”

As Byne entered his eyes went to Mrs. Usher and saw what I had seen, and then he too was satisfied. They took the seats they had had before. Wolfe looked from one to the other and back again.

“I don’t want to prolong this beyond necessity,” he said, “but I would like to congratulate you. You were taken in that place by surprise and brought here with no chance to confer, but you have both lied so cleverly that it would have taken a long and costly investigation to impeach you. It was an admirable performance—If you please, Mr. Byne. You may soon speak, and you will need to. Unfortunately, for you, the performance was wasted. Fresh ammunition has arrived. I have just finished reading a document that was not intended for me.” He looked at Mrs. Usher. “It states, madam, that if you disclose its contents you will suffer a severe penalty, but you have not disclosed them. On
the contrary, you have done your best to safeguard them.”

Mrs. Usher had sat up. “What document? What are you talking about?”

“The best way to identify it is to quote an excerpt—say, the fourth paragraph. It goes: ‘So I have taken steps that should meet the situation. I have given my nephew, Austin Byne, a portfolio of securities the income from which is tax exempt, amounting to slightly more than $2,000,000. The yield will be about $55,000 annually. My nephew is to remit half.’ ”

Byne was on his feet. The next few seconds were a little confused. I was up, to be between Byne and Wolfe, but the fury in his eyes was for Mrs. Usher. Then, as he moved toward her, Saul was there to block him, so everything was under control. But then, with Saul’s back to her and me cut off by Saul and Byne, Mrs. Usher shot out of her chair and streaked for Wolfe. I might have beat her to it by diving across Wolfe’s desk, but maybe not, from where I was, and anyway, I was too astonished to move—not by her, but by him. He had been facing her, so his knees weren’t under the desk and he didn’t have to swivel, but even so, he had a lot of pounds to get in motion. Back went his bulk, and up came his legs, and just as she arrived his feet were there, and one of them caught her smack on the chin. She staggered back into Saul’s arms and he eased her on to the chair. And I’ll be damned if she didn’t put both hands to her jaw and squawk at Wolfe, “You hit me!”